【Become Who You Are】
有時候，審書審到閱讀疲乏的時候，真的很想放棄，稿費不多，卻佔用許多時間與精力。話雖如此，也不是說我的時間有更好的用途。偶爾遇到不怎麼樣的書，耐著性子讀完後還得耐著性子寫報告，有條理的解釋為什麼不好看，其實只想眉批四個字：「難看死了！」但審書的好處是總會讀到一些除此之外不會讀到的書，正如某天某陌生編輯來信請我審的一本哲學書，彷彿遇到早已遺忘的久違朋友，繼而發現原來這些年來的生活一直都受著他的影響：尼采。
作者是美國大學哲學系教授，年輕時曾經追隨尼采的腳步來到瑞士的巴塞爾（費德勒！）登山健行，二十年後帶著妻小舊地重遊，回顧當年的旅程以及這些年來對於尼采哲學觀的認知與改變，寫成了《與尼采健行》這本書。（可惜出版社決定不購買版權，我才能寫出來。）
我不想摘譯，也無從深入討論此書的內容，只能摘錄一些讀起來很有感覺的部分。對我而言，經過多年的渴求與自我追尋，這本書最大的意義在於提醒我「Become who you are」的重點不在於「who」，而是在於「become」。面對沒完沒了的苦難終於恍然大悟，如釋重負。自我追求的重點在於過程，而非終點或答案。我也非常喜歡最後赫曼．赫塞的那一段話，就別讓（我的）翻譯毀了它吧。
“He who has attained to only some degree of freedom of mind cannot feel other than a wanderer on the earth—though not as a traveler to a final destination: for this destination does not exist.” —Friedrich Nietzsche.Human, All Too Human. 1878
“There is in the world a single path where no one can go except you: whither does it lead? Do not ask,” Nietzsche instructs, “but go along it.”
”First, one must become the camel, loaded down with the baggage of the past, of tradition, of cultural constraints. This always struck me as the most brutal of the steps. Usually when one pictures camels they are walking in perfect single file, dutifully carrying their packs. But it’s not always like this. Camels are huge, stubborn creatures—sand monsters, really—that are not inclined to submit to the strictures that are placed on them. So, before the packs are placed on their backs, they have to be broken. Each camel is staked to the ground. And starved. If starvation doesn’t weaken their will, the beatings commence. This is how one becomes a beast of burden. But then, Nietzsche writes, in the loneliest desert, a second metamorphosis occurs: “here the spirit becomes a lion who would conquer his freedom and become the master of his own desert.” The lion is the only beast who can fight, and kill, what Zarathustra calls the dragon of the “Thou shalt.”This dragon must die so that the will—the sheer individual volition—of the lion can live.
…that dying at the right time is the greatest challenge of life, that the line between madness and profundity is a faint thread high in the mountains that eventually vanishes.
As it turns out, “becoming who you are” is not about finding a “who” you have always been looking for. It is not about separating “you” off from everything else. And it is not about existing as you truly “are” for all time. The self does not lie passively in wait for us to discover it. Selfhood is made in the active, ongoing process, in the German verb werden, “to become.”The enduring nature of being human is to turn into something else, which should not be confused with going somewhere else. This sometimes comes as a great disappointment to one who goes in search of the self. What one is, essentially, is this active transformation, nothing more, nothing less. This is not a grand wisdom quest and it doesn’t require one to escape to the mountains. No mountain is high enough. Just a bit of cheese and any fast moving river will suffice.
In becoming who one is, a person turns back, into, gathers something of the past, and carries it forward. It is genealogy compressed under high pressure. The present, as such, is but a placeholder where the past and future meet, a fleeting moment where becoming takes place.
Nietzsche’s point may be that the process of self-discovery requires an undoing of the self-knowledge that you assume you already had. Becoming is the ongoing process of losing and finding yourself.
“You must find your dream,” Hesse instructs, “but no dream lasts forever, each dream is followed by another, and one should not cling to any one particular dream.”
(Kaag, J, Hiking with Nietzsche)
